Amurdak, also rendered Amurdag, Amurdak, Amurag, Amarag and Wureidbug, is an Aboriginal Australian language historically spoken in an area around the eastern coast of Van Diemen Gulf, in the Northern Territory of Australia. No speakers were recorded in the 2021 census, although the last speaker, Charlie Mungulda, coauthored a paper in 2020.
Status According to a report by the National Geographic Society and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, it is an endangered language. The last living speaker, Charlie Mungulda, worked with Australian linguists Nick Evans, Robert Handelsmann and others, over several decades to record his language.Scientists: Many World Languages Are Dying , Associated Press via Fox News, 18 September 2007. Accessed 19 September 2007.
The Amurdak language and Charlie Mungulda were featured in Language Matters with Bob Holman, a 2015 PBS documentary about endangered languages.
According to the 2016 Australian census, there were no speakers of Amurdak in 2016; however, Mungulda's death has not been reported, and he co-authored papers published in May 2020 and April 2026.
Phonology
Consonants
Peripheral Laminal Apical Bilabial Velar Palatal Alveolar Retroflex Plosive Nasal Approximant Trill Flap Lateral () Lateral flap Evans but not Mailhammer identifies a palatal lateral in Amurdag.
Vowels Mailhammer (2009) does not provide a vowel inventory but Evans (1998) briefly discusses vowels in his paper, noting that Iwaidjan languages including Amurdak have a three vowel (/i, a, u/) system.
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References
Further reading Evans, Nicholas (1998). "Iwaidja mutation and its origins". In Anna Siewierska & Jae Jung Song. Case, Typology and Grammar: In honor of Barry J. Blake. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 115–149. Handelsmann, R. (1991). Towards a description of Amurdak: a language of northern Australia. Honours thesis, University of Melbourne, Mailhammer, R. (2009) 'Towards an Aspect-Based Analysis of the Verb Categories of Amurdak', Australian Journal of Linguistics, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 349–391. Neidjie, B., Mulurinj, N., Mailhammer, R., & Handelsmann, R. (2009). Amurdak inyman: Six stories in Amurdak.